/dev: Picking Your Position

Ready to play the way you want more often? Enter: Position Preference.

WHAT’S POSITION PREFERENCE?

We’ve heard you: there’s real pain in champ select when it comes to sorting out who’s playing where and what champ they’re taking. Right now, it’s entirely up to you to sort that out in a short time window with limited communication tools. It stinks. To help solve this, we want to make positions clear to everyone in champ select, and give you more choice over where you play.

Before you get into a match, order your preferred positions (solo, jungle, mid, duo, support) from most to least preferred. From there, matchmaking will prioritize one of your top positions most of the time. It’s still possible to get any position due to fair matchmaking, position popularity, and queue size, but you’ll have more control over your preferences, even if you don’t get your top choice.

So we wanted a position preference system that gives you as much choice as possible:

Want to tell us your favorite position? We got you! 

Want to prioritize all five positions? You can!

Want to fill forever and just jump in? Go wild!

In the end, regardless of what you choose, we’ll make it a priority that you get your most preferred position(s) as often as possible.

SO WHAT’S NEW?

This is just a test, so we’ll be spinning up a separate queue called Position Lab, seeded by your current rankings.This test queue won’t affect your rankings in the normal ranked queue, nor will it affect your rankings after the test is completed.

We’ll be giving Blue Motes to everyone who plays at least one Position Lab game each day to make it worth your while!

We do expect queue times to be longer than normal because not everyone will want to play in the experimental queue. (But we hope you give it a shot!)

When your party has the Position Lab queue specified, you’ll see a new symbol on your player emblem in the lobby. While not required to play, clicking this emblem lets you prioritize your preferences. We’ll use this information when we make matches for you!

If you’re unsure of your preferences, you can see some champions you’ve previously played that fit each of the positions to help you pick. Just selectthe position your favorite champion usually plays!

Once a fair match is made, everyone will be assigned a position; you can see yours in a circle below your icon in champ select. To make things easier, you can filter the champion list by position and view highlighted champions for your assigned position.

HOW’S IT DIFFERENT FROM LEAGUE PC?

The biggest difference is that in Wild Rift, you can specify your preference order for all positions. While we cannot guarantee you’ll never get your least favorite position, we’re aiming for you to get your top two in a majority of games. And when you don’t, we’ll use your preference settings to favor your third and fourth choices. We hope this’ll lead to more enjoyable matches where you get to play your way!

Also, because selecting five positions is a little more complicated than selecting two, we save your preferences from session to session. You can set them once and never touch them again. Or, you can change things up every match.

WHAT ABOUT “TOP” AND “BOT”?

Because of the way the map flips in Wild Rift, we don’t call the top and bottom lanes “Top” and “Bot” because that won’t be how everyone sees them! Because of this, the icons for “Top” and “Bot” don’t really work either. Let’s look at the new position names, icons, and a bit of what inspired them!

• Solo lane:
  • We used a singular shape of an axe to associate with the “solo” aspect of this lane, and the beefy, tanky champions who head there. We also applied some shape elements similar to Baron’s icon, bringing in the characteristics of the big purple beast.
• Jungle:
  • We felt like the classic jungle icon was strong and indicative of the gameplay. Watch out for those brushes!
• Mid lane:
  • The mid lane icon is a three-piece shape that puts more emphasis on the middle segment—with the two other lanes on the sides. We wanted to emphasize the flow and versatility, hinting at the style of play that mid laners crave: roaming, helping other lanes, and flashy plays.
• Duo lane:
  • The new duo icon continues the trend of splitting the shape based on an associated number. The icon is formed of two vertical pistols to look like the weapons you’d likely see in the duo lane. If you look closely, you can see hints of the Dragon icon.
• Support:
  • The classic support icon: sturdy, reliable, steadfast. A good support brings the whole team together. Never change!

SO THIS IS GOING TO BE AMAZING AND PERFECT NOW, RIGHT?

Well… no. Wait, come back!

We’re still early on this feature, so we expect there are some things we’ll have to figure out. We’ll be iterating rapidly on Position Preference based on data we’re collecting as well as your feedback, so keep sending us your thoughts!

HOW LONG IS THE TEST AND WHY SHOULD I PLAY?

We’ll be running this Lab for a few days starting in Patch 2.2. If y’all love this feature, we want to integrate it into Ranked ASAP. The more you play, the better data we get, and the quicker we can tune this feature to get it live.

One quick note for players in the Americas: we won’t be running this test in your region. As the server will still be new, we don’t want to divide up the queues too much. However, we’ll be sure to let you know if that changes.

We hope you’ll help us get Position Preference ready for primetime and can’t wait to hear what you think.